Friday, July 31, 2015

Okay hot shot, you've got your axe, you have the three chord blues progression ready to go, and an arsenal of killer licks. You are the man. Now add a dozen or so more strings. Challenged yet? How's about adding a couple pedals to that, to keep your loafing feet something to do. No wait, let's make it three pedals. Think you got what it takes? Not so fast. Your knees are just sitting around doing nothing, let's add a couple levers for you to operate with them. What the hell, let's just get rid of those frets. You're a hot shit guitarist, you can stay in tune without them. Wait, where are you going? Does the pedal steel guitar scare you?

Fu-huck. Pedal steel has got to be one of the most complicated instruments to play, in any genre. And pedal steel players, by and large, get very little recognition for what they do. Sure, fiends of the instrument, and country and western fans, appreciate a good petal steel player, but the general public see them as side players at best, and most think of the instrument as a novelty. If there was ona person who tried to change that perception, it was Buddy Emmons, a pedal steel player who got his start with Little Jimmy Dickens, and was also in Ernest Tubb's band, Ray Price's, and the Everly Brothers'. Once he had the pedal steel down, he started tweaking it to fill gaps in available notes to play, making it harder to play. In 1963, after backing some of the biggest names in country and western, he recorded a pedal steel jazz album that was raved about in Downbeat magazine, the bible of jazz heads. Dude was the shit.

When Emmons was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1981, they referred to him as a "Major stylist, tuning innovator and originator, creator of enduring licks, riffs, and unique jazz improvisations, composer, and for a quarter century, the world's foremost steel guitarist." And that was a quarter century before he retired. Emmons died earlier this week so it's high time to throw him in the mix. Here's just a random sampling. There's a bunch of videos at YouTube should these wet your whistle.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Every scene has it's own bands, and back in the days of fanzines, every scene usually had it's own fanzine that everybody read. In the pre-internet days, that's how groups of miscreants coalesced. Old school social media. Some scenes had several fanzines, all with different attitudes, writing styles and levels of slickness. Los Angeles had a bunch and the two biggees were Flipside and Slash. In the early days, the most popular was definitely Slash, a tabloid edited by the late Claude "Kickboy Face" Bessy, a transplanted Frenchman with penchant for spot on shit stirring rants. He was the heart and soul of Slash and his editorials alone were worth picking up the zine.

Claude Bessy aka Kickboy Face, rants, fields a phone call, and sings.

Other writers included Chris Desjardins (lead singer of the Flesheaters) and a pre-Gun Club Jeffery Lee Pierce (writing largely reggae reviews under the name Chatty Chatty Mouth). Among contributing artists were Gary Panter (who would end up designing the set for Pee Wee's Playhouse and still paints today) and brilliant collage artist Lou Beach. The magazine was (I think) designed by co-publisher Steve Samiof, and defined the L.A. brand of cut and paste. The other co-publisher, Melanie Nissen, one of several photographers, went beyond typical fan type band shots. There were so many other contributors that the magazine, taken as a whole, seemed at times like a collaborative effort by the entire scene.

If any of you aging Southern California punkers lost track of your tattered old copies of Slash, help is here. Circulation Zero just posted the complete 29 issue run, in pdf format. It's 600 mb, but a quick five minute download. This is as close to a complete overview of the Los Angeles punk scene from 1977-1980 as you're likely to find. The music below, hosted at Killed By Death, is by no means all of the L.A. bands of that era, and three weren't actually L.A. bands (but scene favorites regardless), but it's a damn good cross section. The copies of Slash, particularly the first dozen or so, along with the music below is about as close to being there, without the fog of time, as there is.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

You know what the difference is between a twelve year old in 1970 and an eighteen year old in 1970? One minute and thirteen seconds of the Guess Who's "America Woman". The younger kids heard a radio mix on AM radio. Their older stoner cousins heard it on free form FM radio, with the long introduction that may or may not have been needed. It really isn't as enjoyable as the riffage that follows, but it is effective as an build-up. For eighteen year old stoner cousins, I guess.

These guys were right on the cusp, in 1966 with their "Shakin' All Over" smack dab in the AM Boss Radio era, and "American Woman" straddling both AM and FM in 1970. If you asked me if I was a Guess Who fan, I'd shrug. But, shit, it was good to hear these again.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Everybody knows "Shakin' All Over". The first version I heard the Who's, from Live at Leeds. You probably know it. It's a mutha. Then I heard the Guess Who's, which predated the Who's by about four years and was a minor hit in the U.S. in 1965. I didn't hear it until later, played on oldies stations. The next version I heard was Johnny Kidd's original, I didn't need to go further. 1960, as it was meant to be heard.

Tonight, study hall was on. I finally decided to school myself on Johnny Kidd, the damn eye patch and everything. Then I decided to look for other covers and.., just forget it. There's too many. I have other goofing off to get to.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

I know very little of Thee Tsunamis, three songs, that's it. I heard two songs at Still In Rock, and they both had me wishing I'd have had the opportunity (and wherewithal) to mix them. I'm getting a little tired of all that self aware lo-fi stuff, and come to think of it, bands that use "Thee" in their name. But that's major league nitpicking. Both of the songs are good, well written and executed, and sufficiently noisy. I dared to try one more song before forming a general opinion. After seeing the video below, any thought of an immediate assessment was abandoned. I can't be objective. A guitarist that looks like a young Melanie Griffith and sings like a cross between Patti Smith and Teenage Jesus-era Lydia Lunch, wearing a Colonel Saunders type suit, fucking with pedals and feedback? I can't possibly turn my back on that. The intro alone leaves me, a red blooded noise loving American male (hetero at that), disqualified from judging the book without looking at the cover. I've seen the cover. Cat's out of the bag.

Friday, July 24, 2015

I actually heard Dawn Penn's "No No No (You Don't Love Me Anymore)" in my car today, on a regular FM radio station. Hefty surprise that, particularly on a station that usually plays eighties R&B. That was followed by Bob Marley's "One Love", which everybody's heard a million times, but still, promising. Then came UB fucking 40. Click. I could go the rest of my life without hearing UB40 or the English Beat. Turns out that the station is having some sort of "Bob Marley Weekend". I think I'll cut my losses.

I'd never posted the Penn cut, and it's a good one, so, what the hell. I found her later version from 1994, with U Roy sampled all over the place. (The original was recorded at Studio One in 1967.) Looking for another of hers I ran into a DJ special which is sung over the the riddim of Trinity's "Three Piece Suit" and, it being summer, I had to add Althea and Donna's almighty "Uptown Top Ranking" which utilizes the same riddim, and is one of a handful of songs I have no shame in posting again and again. (That's them in the photo above.) To round things out, Rita Marley's "One Draw", which was like the summer stoner jam of the mid-eighties.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

The ocean water temperature was 73 degrees today. Depending on how you spend your leisure time and where you live, you might relate, you might not care, or you might think I'm an asshole for even bringing it up. If you've experienced it at that temperature, you know. When you're in the water you don't even feel it. It isn't noticeably warm or cold, it's just wet. It's weird if you stop for a second and just float around. All womb-like n' shit. The surf wasn't much good, but the water was moving, and it was wet and salty, and that's good enough. This music feels like shitty 73 degree surf. It's not frantic, but it's definitely ridable.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

I don't feel like doing much of anything, so here's four songs by Sugar Pie Desanto and a cool photo of her getting down, all 4'11" of her. That photo says about eighty times more than I could write on a good night. Johnny Otis said more in two words, "Sugar Pie". That came from his brain. Dude was omnipotent.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

If you have ever heard Redd Kross' "(Legend) Come On Up to Me" from the soundtrack of David Markey's Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, you may be surprised to find out it's a cover. The original was done be Backstage Pass, who some of you may remember as a completely lame early L.A. new wave band. Their original is so bad it's comical, almost like the Shaggs doing new wave.

Markey made Desperate Teenage Lovedolls on Super 8 in the 1984 and followed it up with a sequel, Lovedolls Superstar, in 1986. Both are the lowest of low budget, the first costing a whopping $250 to make. But the soundtracks are great, heavy on the Redd Kross, with contributions by White Flag, Black Flag, Gone, and a bunch of others.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Beyond the sound and the danceable grooves of mid-late sixties funk, one thing I really dig is the flair, the other stuff. The grunts and ad-libs, screams and squeals. It seems the more obscure the artist, the more creative this bonus flair. This one is a good example, Issac Clark's "Do the Dog Funk". Fans of JB will dig the groove, Jackie Chan fans will dig the moment at 2:13. Fans of earnestness will dig Issac Clark's diverse lexicon and nonstop carrying on.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

My brother recently hepped me to an early clip of Johnny Cash on a TV show doing a goofy Elvis impersonation. It's Sun Records-era Cash, around the time Elvis left the label. So, what the hell, reason enough to post some of Cash's early stuff. Here's just a few, but check the Mustard Relics link below for seventeen more Sun-era cuts.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Oh hell yeah. This is good. A documentary on the Saints' early days, and their first LP, (I'm) Stranded. It's an hour long, just posted a couple months ago at YouTube, which is why it pays to repeat searches previously thought exhausted. If you dig the Saints, by the end of it you'll be running for your old beat to shit copy.. If you know them but bailed before the third LP, check their covers of Otis Redding's "Security" and Arethra's "Save Me" from Prehistoric Sounds. Nitpickers would argue, but they sure sound like punk soul to me.

Friday, July 17, 2015

I heard a cover of "Monk Chant" by the Raincoats the other night and it sucked me into a Monks binge. I know, I know, most of you probably have Black Monk Time or, if you've been hanging around here for any length of time, have seen one of the other old posts with Monks stuff. You locals, take a pass or dig through the index. This is for the peagreens.

In a nutshell: The Monks were ex-GIs, Americans, who stuck around Germany after they were discharged in the mid-sixties. Originally called the Torquays, they shaved the tops of their heads started wearing black and became the Monks. Their sound was built on organ, electric banjo, distorted guitar, an ample amount of feedback, nearly cymbal-less drums, and an unrelenting thud of a beat. They sometimes got into fights with members of the audience, and they probably got laid a time or two. Read the lengthy bio on their site, all of it. Listen. Watch the videos. This, as they say, is the shit.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Hey, it's a free album, a free new album, by Wilco, eleven songs with a picture of a cat on the cover for you Facebook cat people. Free? That's my favorite flavor. Yeah, I bit. A random sampling reveals some good stuff, though I'm not a fiend enough to know where it rates on the Wilco quality-o-meter. But, what the hell, right? Get it quick because it's only free for a limited time. You have to give your email address but they say they won't share it. Do it or don't, I don't care. I'm just a sucker for free stuff by bands I don't hate.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

I'm not sure what possesses a group of loosely associated bands, or their followers, to make up names for their regional thing, but the names they come up with for these scenes within scenes almost always sound forced, like some marketing term. They're usually lame, and sometimes don't even accurately describe the music of all of the bands that are lumped together. Like "the paisley underground". Yeesh, that one had me turned off the first time I heard it, despite liking several of the bands that were lumped with it. They could just as easily been referred to as "the bands that sometimes utilize long feedback laden solos somewhere this side of early Neil Young meets Marquee Moon era Televison guitar interplay underground". But like 'em I did and I was reminded of that after seeing a clip of a song from a 2013 reunion gig by Rain Parade (the band above). So, bad name or not, it's paisley underground sampler night. These are just three of the bands. If you want to get caught up on all of the bands, check the oral history of the movement at the Guardian. It's a good read, and there's a Spotify mix with thirty plus songs, if you do that sort of thing.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Here's a few of the (International) Noise Conspiracy, from at a jazz festival in Sweden in 2003. They are joined by jazz saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar and jazz pianist Sven-Erik Dahlber, both apparently big deals in Swedish jazz. Rad. (You can read the whole long thing about the gig at Alternative Tentacles.) What I dig about these guys is that in their particular salad bowl you can hear plenty of stuff that came before them, and a lot that may or may not have been borrowed by bands that came after them. Stooges, no wave, At The Drive-In, the Hives, etc. I'm not some diehard fan, but I can appreciate that they weren't beholden to a template. They sounded good and they liked to fuck with things. What's not to like? And, hell yeah, left leaning politics were the icing on the cake.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Here we go again. After hearing Joe Bravo's cover of "Sissy Strut" the other day, I was poking around to hear more of this guy I'd never heard of. The first song I ran into was "Please Call Me Baby", which was totally different, a Tejano ballad that sounded hokey on the first listen. But the damn thing sucked me in, and over the course of the last few days has become one of those type of songs that you don't want to over analyze, you just go with it. So, yeah, I dig it for unexplainable reasons, and you may not, but that led to further hunting. Just who the hell is Joe Bravo? I'm sure there's a lengthy bio somewhere but all I was able to find was on a site for a Tejano Legends Cruise. As it turns out, back in the day he took over as lead singer for the Sunglows after Sunny Ozuna left. That's some pretty big shoes to fill and reason enough to add him to the ever growing list of names to remember when perusing the dollar bins.

Good ol' dependable Super Sonido had another one, "Yolanda" which is more of what you might expect from border music, that is until the sax kicks in. It's a short solo that wouldn't be out of place on some old jazz record and I was hoping it would last longer, but, hell, the song is only a little over two minutes long. Super Sonido lumped it with a couple other songs from other bands on the same label. One is a soul jazz cover of an Eddie Harris song by the Mexican Revolution, and the other a James Brown like number by Augustine Ramirez. All three are worth checking out.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Dig these guys. The video below just kills me. The performance is good, but it didn't hurt seeing that it was from a Detroit public access television show, one called Colored People's Time. The whole low budget regional vibe is there. I'd prefer it to some pristine version. Hi-Res has it's place, but not here. Regardless, it's very cool that this footage exists.

Saturday, July 11, 2015

It's an oddball instrumental kind of night. First up is Art Butler's "Soul Brother" a funky organ driven instrumental. A lot of stuff going on in that one. Bass, organ, some unrelenting tambourine and drums that would fall under the classification of tight ass. Looking without success for an image of Butler, I somehow ended up on a YouTube thing of Giancarlo Barigozzi Group, from Italy, sometime in the seventies. It's a swinging instrumental, also with organ, made all the better by the cover of the LP it came from (above). Speaking of covers, check the one below. It's deceiving. You would not expect that to contain a badass cover of the Meters' "Sissy Strut", but it does. The fruits of meandering.

Friday, July 10, 2015

If you ever make it through the links listed under "Get Lost" in the left column over there, you might have seen the link to De Discos y Monstruos, a coolly curious blog featuring oddball 45s and a monster toy in every post. Though they've slowed down (their last post in January), there is a lot of good stuff in their old posts. To wit, these two that were posted back to back two years ago. The first is a cover of Mitch Ryder's "Sock It To Me" by a band of studio musicians calling themselves Jalopy Five, for this particular release. From what I can ascertain from a dubious translation of the post, which is in Spanish, the label Hit Records specialized in churning out covers of popular hits and then selling them cheaper. Yeah, the stinkers. But this one is good, and the unnamed singer does a better, gruntier, job than Ryder did on the original. The slapdash production just adds to it.

The other 45 over there is a later Jackie Wilson cover of Stevie Wonder's "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" backed by the Count Basie Orchestra. It's good, but the real reason I'm even mentioning it is to bring up another Wilson cut that some of you may not have heard. We all know Jackie Wilson, right? "Lonely Teardrops" was his biggee. The other song of his down there is "You Better Thing Twice (Version X)" a duet by him and LaVern Baker, she of "Tweedlee Dee" and "Jim Dandy" fame. The reason it's "Version X"? Just listen to it and hear them in all their potty mouth glory. Another humdinger that demands reposting.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

There's almost always a few street musicians down by the beach near me, and they almost always suck. Sometimes it's material that blows, sometimes it's the choice of instrument, but usually it's just a lack of effort. So a smartly dressed alto sax player with chops sticks out like a sore thumb around here. As a jazz dabbler, I have to pick his brain when I get the chance. I like doing that, it reminds me of when I knew nothing about rock 'n' roll and I had to ask someone who did. The other day he asked if I'd ever seen the movie Round Midnight, that starred Dexter Gordon as a fictitious character based of the lives of Bud Powell and Lester Young. I remember hearing about the movie years ago, when I had no interest in jazz whatsoever. Never saw it. I came home and watched the trailer and it looked cool. As a dedicated tightwad, I was delighted to find out you can find it on DVD for five bucks online. That's another thing to like about jazz. It's almost always cheap. At least the Jazz 101 stuff. Where was I? Oh yeah, Dexter Gordon. Here's a few by him.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

There's a relatively new series over at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban. They're calling it Instrumental 45 of the Week, A rather wide net that is, leaving it open for half of all singles ever recorded. But this is Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban, who you can count on for things worth hearing. Last week it was patron saint Link Wray and "Comanche", a damn fine cut you should lap up. I, for one, waited anxiously for six days wondering how they were going to top that. But of course, I should have known. You can only top that with the most half-assed version of "Apache" ever committed to vinyl, at least in production value. I'll tell you, if these hipster lo-fi bands of today had any balls they'd do it like Teen Sound Inc, who is credited with production. I think Teen Sound Inc is code for "the guy holding the microphone of the portable cassette". Something like that. I'm pretty sure it was the same guy who produced the Germs' "Forming".

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

This might lack the punch if you're unfamiliar with Merv Griffin. He was a talk show host in the U.S., really big in the seventies, but his career spanned decades. I'm sure he acted and sang as well. It was that era. Everybody in show biz dabbled. Vegas, variety shows, telethons, all on the circuit. Griffin was one of those guys. Check this out, it's like "What A Wonderful World" for the blissed out hippie dirtbag set. But fuzz, strings and Merv Griffin? Shit yeah. Play this for your teens and take the night off.

Monday, July 6, 2015

Years ago when my brother was in a surf band, the Evasions, like other surf bands, they did a few vocal numbers. My guess is that Richard "Skid Roper" Banke, the other guitarist, was the one who suggested the covers. He'd already been collecting vintage records for years, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of early rock and roll. Whoever it was that suggested they do "Bertha Lou" deserves my utmost gratitude. The song been a favorite of mine ever since, not necessarily because their version rocked the house, which it did. It wasn't even the complete song itself. What got me was the line "I want to conjugate with you". Surely one of the all time best uses of a weird word in a rock 'n' roll song. The rest of the lyrics are almost as good. How are you gonna beat "You wear your hair in a poodle cut, you're walkin' down the street like a semi-truck, and everybody knows that you're so sweet, you tickle me from head to my athlete's feet."? Pure poetry.

From what I've browsed online, of which the accuracy can be questioned, the timeline went something like this. Sometime around 1957, after the Rock 'n' Roll Trio broke up, Johnny and Dorsey Burnette had designs on a career in songwriting. They'd hang around outside of Ricky Nelson's house and pitch songs as Ricky Nelson would come and go. "Believe What You Say" and "It's Late" are two that Nelson would end up recording. Around that time Johnny Burnette wrote "Bertha Lou". He ended up selling the rights to a guy named John Marascalco, reportedly because he needed the money for rent. After that it gets convoluted. Johnny Faire appears to be the first to record it, but Clint Miller's version was rushed out and heavily promoted, and it became the hit. The Dorseys' version, under the name Dorsey Burnette, was later. Whatever. It's a great song that you should dig the shit out of.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

What the hell. I ran into a song by someone unfamiliar to me, Michel Pagliaro, over at Art Decade. That's the guy in the photo above. It ended up wetting my appetite for some more of the same type of seventies pop. The other bands below came to mind because they were championed by different friends. That's what this type of stuff is like. For every seventies pop band, or power pop if that's what you want to call it, there's a fan base that thinks they're the greatest think since sliced bread. If there wasn't I might not have actually gotten past a couple listens. But, you know what? If you listen to a few in a row, it'll make you lighten up. There is a function.

Saturday, July 4, 2015

"This land was made for you and me" from Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" is probably the most patriotic line ever written about the United States of America. It's more important than all of the flag waving, all of the fireworks, a day off, barbeques and whatnot. We need to remember that line, every day, not just on the Fourth of July. We need to remember it particularly on election day, when weighing who's in bed with corporations, special interests and fat cats. That would be an excellent time to keep it in mind.

Here's Guthrie's version and a particularly good cover by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. If you're unfamiliar with Guthrie, you should slap yourself silly and then watch the documentary linked below. Seriously. He's one of the most important figures in the history of American music.

Friday, July 3, 2015

Today I ran into an old roommate and it made my day. Put a skip in my step. Though we had reconnected on Facebook a few years ago, we hadn't had seen each other face to face for decades. She's a special friend, one of several that I lived with in a seven bedroom house that changed the lives of everyone who lived there. They were formative years, the ages of the roommates ranged from eighteen to late twenties. It was just as punk rock began morphing into hardcore but we would have little to do with either, at least when it came to listening to music around the house. We listened to everything. There were stereos and thrift store record players in just about every room, including the kitchen, and occasionally the stair landing between floors. Records were scattered willy nilly everywhere. Back then thrift store finds were everyday occurrences, and just about every trip fruitful. Everybody in the house had an open mind when it came to genre jumping. My friend Lisa, the roommate I ran into today, was one of a select few that didn't give a shit what type of music it was. If it was good, she would dig it. That's a good thing to be around, particularly in a group setting. To be around it as a young adult, that's part of what was so formative.

Here's just a few songs that would get frequent spins. There's hundreds more but I didn't want to be here all night. The photo at the top of the post is a random group of some people that happened to be hanging out in in one particular part of the house on a day when my brother was using the room for a band photo shoot. There could well have been a couple more groups in other parts of the house. In that photo there are five residents, three local guests, one from Los Angeles, and another from Boston. The photo directly above is Lisa and I back in the day. You can read more yarns about the house here (once there, scroll down).

Thursday, July 2, 2015

As if it wasn't an obvious enough cash-in, the Trashmen, a band from Minnesota, doing a song called "Surfin' Bird". Despite the fact that it was an absurd racket, more dada than surf, it was still a cash-in. Then another band from Minnesota, the Jades, do a instrumental called "Surfin' Crow". What's their deal with birds? And landlocked surf? Who the hell cares?

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